Good green:
- key words: harmless & harmonious
- ethical
- humanistic
- egalitarian
- relative needs of the collective
- seek internal peace
- join caring community
- fit in with prevailing norms (as greens)
- share resources and seeks equal opportunity for all
- in touch with emotions, more right brain than left
- seeks harmony and love
- decision-making through reconciliation and consensus processes, democracy
- emphasises spirituality and consciousness
- goals of harmony and enriching human development
- anti-authoritarian, anti-hierarchy
- social justice movements & activism
- values art and creativity
Green goop:
- self-righteous and views lower stages as wrong, encouraging polarisation. at same time can be too relativistic
- pressure to fit in with the green group, can stifle dissent and individuality
- identity politics, emphasising differences on one hand. on other hand ''everyone is equal'' rhetoric can de-emphasise differences
- victim mentality. cancel culture & political correctness. easily offended. conflict-avoidant
- black and white thinking, good vs bad
- idealistic, naive, lacks in-depth systemic thinking for structural change
- micro-empathy over macro, short-term over long-term, emotions over rationality, too much talk too little action
- can overly demonise capitalism etc (hmm). on other hand may be easily co-opted - green-washing
- spirituality remains mostly superficial due to lack of dedicated internal focus. focus on community and external activism can distract from this. feeds on spiritual porn and prone to bliss ninnie effect. expectations about how a ''spiritual person'' should be. priority is to feel good.
- may overly-romanticise purple
- hypocrisy where actions don't match speech/beliefs. green guilt as a result
- impatience
- often privileged and may not fully account for this
- prone to burnout from caring too much + lacking deeper emotional, spiritual skills to deal with it all
My green:
Extra difficulties (that may block transition to yellow):
- Autistic and strong justice sensitivity, makes it hard to let go of certain problems
- Autistic, queer and vegan and identify strongly with marginalised identities and related activism, maybe over-emphasise differences, us vs them
- Anti-capitalist ideology - perhaps overly demonise orange, perhaps naive about it, hard to fully imagine let alone act for alternatives
- Hypocrisy (especially re environment/climate change), apathy, privilege. Guilt - could and should be doing more. Especially as a member of various marginalised identities feel it is up to people like me (on other hand I realise this in a way can be an extra burden that we should not feel is our duty to carry out)
- Maybe some black and white thinking, in relation to good vs bad, right vs wrong (on plus side, less falling into relativism, ‘’everyone is equal’’)
- Very sensitive to people and their feelings, can fear upsetting them, conflict-avoidant (this very much depends on the people and circumstance though, sometimes i can be the opposite!)
- Somewhat idealistic, lack in-depth technical knowledge, also lack patience for detail and practicalities, and can get easily bored of a topic/cause after a while
- Spirituality could be a lot deeper than it is (especially since i lost the hyper-focus). Other interests currently distracting from it.
- One one hand can fantasise about close-knit community (as per purple), on other hand definitely realise the drawbacks and even dangers of it
Relative ease (that aids transition to yellow):
- It’s not easy for me to become enmeshed in a community, esp irl - so i miss some of the benefits of green because of this, but also more easily avoid some of the pitfalls (and especially due to some autistic traits like more easily going against the norm and not falling for group think and social pressure so much or just getting distracted by social dynamics)
- Autistic, low spoons, executive dysfunction etc - hard to actually do external activism. I'm a natural thinker, not a doer. Also prefer solo work and focus (which is yellow)
- Masters degree in international development (essentially political economy) and still some interest in the subject - more knowledge than perhaps most of the complexity, less naive about the problem, but mostly on a theoretical level. In particular - structuralist view - lessens blame and anger towards ‘’bad’’ individuals, see as product of the wider environment (but then anger can be directed at amorphous ‘system’ and those that have the most control)
- I at least have some amount of spiritual knowledge, interest and experience, when many greens and lower colours have less or none at all. Will easily avoid the community-based spirituality (which can be more superficial) and be more self-focused
- Good macro level empathy, bigger picture, can see a longer view, patience
- Passivity, more prone to thinking, reading, researching, writing, communciating online than taking actions and building community irl - less chance to get burnt out / swept away.
- Quite a forgiving person. Less falling into cancel culture
- Victim mentality - don’t think I have this much
- Thick skin, not that easily offended? depends
- Think I am well aware of my privilege because I am aware of my un-privilege, helps me understand it all better for others as well and the world in general (also my uni education about the developing world gave me perspective of privilege as a westerner)
- A tip to better integrate orange is to start a business, ideally one that serves the community and does its best to avoid exploiting people and the environment whilst also managing to make profit - this is exactly what i am trying to do with my art business
Working through green:
I believe many of the problems of green are not problems with the ideas of green itself, but unhealthiness that can manifest from the way green can be conducted - as in it's about how green is done not what it wants to do (i suppose this applies to all the colours/stages, but perhaps especially to green where the ideas are so good and yet where the means can fall so short). In part this is simply due to the difficulties of operationalising green in what is still a largely blue-orange capitalist world.
It is hard to see how an ethics of harmlessness, harmony and equality - whilst extremely hard to achieve in practice - is anything but right in terms of what direction we should be heading in. It's more about taking care in how we hold all this, and how we work with others - especially those we disagree with - to move forward.
Next: start studying yellow so I can get more insight in how to work through (unhealthy) green